The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! đ
sherbertwells's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Please read this book?
If you like sharply-drawn, illuminated characters, read this book. If you like thrilling and natural plots, read this book. If you like social commentary that even today rings out like a cymbal: read this book. If you like brilliant narrative voice, strong and haunting motifs, coming of age stories, musical proseâ
If you, like me, were assigned to read Ralph Ellisonâs âOn Bird, Bird-Watching and Jazzâ for AP Language & Composition, promptly discovered that Ellison was the best nonfiction prose writer in the whole English language but waited half a year to pick up anything else by him for fear of being disillusioned, only to realize that the only illusions about him were the ones you created by worrying: read this book.
Perhaps that advice is a little narrow.Â
Letâs start again.
âI am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquidsâand I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see meâ (3)
Ralph Ellisonâs 1947 novel Invisible Man is the coming-of-age story of a young Black man in the early 20th century, told in flashback from the safety of a sewer where the unnamed narrator is hiding out (donât worry, no Hugoesque tangents here). He recounts his youth in a small Southern town, his formal education at a Black College and his practical education in Harlem, where he joins a revolutionary group called the Brotherhood. Eventually, he realizes that no institution or theoryâfrom the uplift suasion of the collegeâs sanctified Founder to the Black nationalism of Harlem agitator Ras the Exhorterâis capable of seeing him as an individual.
Which is a shame, because Ellisonâs anonymous protagonist is the best narrator in the English language (yes, better than Humbert Humbert, or at least less despicable and just as eloquent). Heâs a little vain, a little angry, hopeful and weary at the worst times but devastatingly smart throughout. By the end of the story, as he learns to see himself and the world around him clearly, I was cheering.
âI faced them knowing hat the madman in a foreign costume was real and yet unreal, knowing that he wanted my life, that he held me responsible for all the nights and days and all the suffering and for all that which I was incapable of controlling, and I no hero, but short and dark with only a certain eloquence and a bottomless capacity for being a fool to mark me from the rest; saw them, recognized them at last as those whom I had failed and of whom I was now, just now, a leader, through leading them, running ahead of them, only in the stripping away of my illusionmentâ
Heck yeah! Self-actualize!
The story itself is great too, set in a bright, harsh and plausible America under a âveiled sunâ of hope and ignorance (450). Every locale is a well-evoked symbol, and every episode contributes and reframes the storyâs themes, from the famous âBattle Royaleâ sequence in the novelâs beginning to the race riot at its end.
Invisible Man is about 570 pags long, and I know that sounds like a lot to get through, but the plot flies by. If you havenât read a big book in years: read this book. If youâve read nothing but slow-paced tomes: read this book. If youâve been assigned Invisible Man in school and are frantically scrolling through online reviews: read this book, not only to please your teacher but because this book is really great. If youâre looking for something to read this Februaryâor March or April or any other month of the yearâread this book. If youâre nervous, confused, sad or anything else: read this book. Whatever your age, color, gender, sexuality or philosophy: read this book.
Please. Listen.
âWho knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?â (572)
P.S. Incidentally, this is the third in a trilogy of âfavorite books where a character has a glass eye,â along with Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. I donât know why this is, but it sure is a great symbol!
Graphic: Racism, Racial slurs, Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Incest
Moderate: Sexual content, Police brutality, and Infidelity
Minor: Genocide, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, and Drug use
More...